


With My Body I So Swear

by THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Choking, Cohort!AU, F/F, Minor suicidal ideation, Under-negotiated Kink, erotic swearing of oaths of fealty, fucked-up emotional dynamics, harrows self-loathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:00:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24995767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE/pseuds/THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE
Summary: Harrowhark's world is ash; her long deception is discovered, and the Emperor has ordered the House of the Ninth to be rebuilt under the tutelage of the Third. That is humiliating enough; worse is the Crown Princess of Ida, who seems obsessed with the oath of fealty Harrow must swear to the Third.The thing about fealty is you swear it on your knees...
Relationships: Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Coronabeth Tridentarius
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	With My Body I So Swear

**Author's Note:**

> I have a particular headcanon that Coronabeth can, in her way, be just as horrible and domineering a personality to be around as Ianthe; this fic explores how the Crown Princess of Ida might act on her home turf.
> 
> This fic, as it's from Harrow's perspective, deals in intense self-loathing, with some suicidal ideation. It also features serious under-negotiated kink, and an uneven power dynamic. Caveat Lector.

The Solar Barge that carries the Third House to war is vast, and palatial, and so absolutely tacky it makes Harrow seethe. Bad enough her ruse with her parents was discovered; bad enough her sacred duty is stripped from her “until such time as the Ninth can stand on its own”. That her house, her _people_ , are to become a mere adjunct to the House of the Third is, Harrow thinks, bad enough. Making her sail off to some battlefront in this glitzy bauble is the humiliation atop the ruin.

The gym, too, is awful. Harrowhark Nonagesimus has never heretofore lifted a weight in her life, save that required to create the necessary constructs of bone or to stick her parents’ heads back to their necks. There are a frankly bewildering array of treadmills, mats, bars, pulleys, and machines doused in suspicious amounts of chrome and leather. She’d sent the House page away, and dismissed the skeletons spotting her.

(The third _gilds_ their skeletons, which is just so completely unsanitary Harrow has to suppress a shudder at the thought).

She’s drawn the curtains across the floor-to-ceiling mirror at the end of the room, too. The sight of her own bare face, red with exertion, is humiliating. She yearns to break free, to find a pallet of grave dirt and raise enough skeletons to choke the reactor lifeless. But the Emperor has commanded her to stay under the _tutelage_ of the Third. She cannot disobey God.

Not yet.

The elliptical isn’t too bad. She huffs and puffs through it, her pulse hammering in her ears, her hair gross and sweat-slicked. This is nothing like the blood sweat from necromancy. There’s always that slight rush of thanergy, and even when she’s run herself dry she feels she can control it. Here, she just feels lumpen and sluggish. She suspects the ship’s gravity is dialled up higher than it is on the Ninth. That might explain why everyone is so perfectly sculpted, although she has to admit that if that were the case the Princesses of Ida would be less obnoxiously tall.

Gideon Nav would love this room; Aiglamene is probably using her as an exemplar for the Third outcasts and convicts who will become the Ninth’s next generation of military friars right now. The Third soldiers and attendants here are immaculately attired, more like mannequins than warriors. Her own shapeless blacks make her look like a shabby scarecrow by comparison.

Had the Ninth still been its own House, that would’ve been mysterious and intimidating. As it is, it’s pathetic. The fitness gear they’ve given her – thoughtfully in black, the _bastards_ – clings in places Harrow isn’t used to her clothes clinging. Had the Ninth still been its own House, she’d be answering the Emperor’s call in her own ship, with time to find solutions. Instead she’s training for war on another House’s warship, to another House’s whim, guarded by another House’s soldiers, and in a few hours she’s going to have to clean herself up and swear vassalage to that House’s King.

Her mouth tastes of iron and bile and failure.

She slows on the elliptical, then, huffing, stops. The little effort required to stop it moving makes her muscles clench. This isn’t blood sweat and thanergy – she can’t just power through until she passes out, however much she wants to.

The last thing on the list – the one the page had tried to coax her into, before she’d stared at the girl until she went away – is the damned weights. It can’t be that difficult, she tells herself. Even Griddle can manage weights.

Another, rather less on-message, part of her brain replies that while Gideon Nav may be a moron with a sword and a stack of improbable pornography where her brains should go, her facility with muscle, in contrast to Harrow’s with bone, was entirely earned and fuelled by determination. Griddle has the patience – dullardry – to stare at a dark wall for hours while doing chin-ups; Harrow’s not sure if she’d get bored or pull a muscle first.

Boredom has certainly been making a sustained assault on her so far. What she wouldn’t give for a necromantic theorem for developing muscle.

“Enjoying the facilities?”

The voice is old wood and polished gold; assured that whoever is listening is hanging on every word. It could only belong to a Tridentarius, and the playful tone could only belong to the elder twin. Harrow turned, and mentally cursed her lack of paint. If she’d been wearing it, the Crown Princess of Ida couldn’t have seen her eyes widen and the brief – infinitesimal, really – moment of slack in her mouth.

The first meeting she’d had with the princesses had been distant – they in grey-and-purple robes, she fuming at the handover ceremony. Griddle had gawked like a horny teenager – she _is_ a horny teenager – at Coronabeth Tridentarius, and, privately, a part of Harrow couldn’t blame her. The twins are stunningly attractive; Corona loud and bombastic and carefree with it, Ianthe sly and watching and intense.

If Griddle could see Coronabeth now she’d be drooling. The robes are gone; in their place is the most absurd of parade uniforms. The cloth is a deep violet that matches the Third’s eyes, iced with a froth of gold braid and cuff-loops and shiny buttons. There’s an ornamental jacket hanging off her left shoulder with what looks like the entire planetary population of some small defenceless furry creature lining the inside. The hat is, somehow, even bigger than the hair. The whole thing is tight, too, so tight Harrow can only imagine Coronabeth had to be greased to fit into it.

She then forcibly _stops_ herself imagining it, because she has no paint to hide the blush. She can’t stop her eyes darting to Coronabeth’s thighs, taut in the fabric of her britches where the dark riding boots end, or the near-sculpted line of her waist where the sash cinched, or to where the top few central buttons have been left artfully undone and someone taller than Harrow could get an eyeful of Coronabeth’s tits.

It’s like all of Griddle’s sordid magazines have come to life and squeezed themselves into a vacuum pack.

Coronabeth is favouring her with a weapons-grade smirk, lips painted as red as royal velvet. It’s a possessive expression, like Harrow’s already sworn the oath and bound herself to the Third. She instantly hates it, and hates the Princess. Bad enough she’s forced to humiliate herself like this. The least the Third could do is be less fucking smug about it.

“They’re adequate,” Harrow says, trying to imply that not only are the workout facilities on the Ninth infinitely superior, they are tastefully decorated in dark colours, with skeletal attendants and absolutely no mirrors to show how one’s face had gone all red and sweaty. Maybe they aree; she’s never checked. The one time she’d spied on Aiglamene, Ortus, and Nav doing sword drill there had seemed to be an inordinate amount of repetitive motion and flashing steel, and she’d left.

Coronabeth’s expression – somehow even more obnoxious than Griddle’s – says _I don’t believe you_. Harrow tries to summon up all her haughtiness, but that’s difficult when her legs feel like jelly and the air feels cold against her warm skin.

“Well,” says Coronabeth, “I’m glad you’re enjoying my House’s hospitality.” That _hospitality_ has mostly consisted of opulent, empty rooms and silent flesh-and-blood servants. Had Harrow ever received guests at the Ninth, she’d at least have made it plainly clear she didn’t care about them, rather than artfully implying it. “I do so hope you’ll enjoy your time here.”

The Princess is watching her like she expects gratitude, or rapt attention, or for Harrow to fall on her knees. It’s that, more than anything, that Harrow finds profoundly aggravating; Coronabeth Tridentarius is a necromancer, the Crown Princess of Ida, and yet she still seems to want adoration on top of power.

“I’m sure I shall find my House’s humiliation comfortable.” Harrow walks over to her towel. She’d thrown it over the leather bench of the weight – station? Machine? _Thing._ There’s a bottle of water – plastic, with a strange top you have to open with your teeth – and, she has to admit, as chemical as the treated water tastes, it’s as cold and comforting as the inside of the Tomb.

She hears the click of Coronabeth’s boots – have they got spurs? Who wears _spurs_ ? – on the hardwood floor. She feels the Princess looming behind her, like the onrush of calamity. She wants to turn and claw, to clutch for thanergy and put this wretch in her place. The Ninth does not _bow_ , and were Harrow less of an abject failure she’d have opened the airlocks and walked out years ago.

But she couldn’t have done that. Every time she considered it – even now – she saw that serene face, set against the ice. Still and perfect, and somehow all the more lovely for not being alive to sneer or backbite or betray.

“Don’t think of it as humiliation, Harry,” Coronabeth says, voice soft. At that, Harrow spins.

“My name is _Harrowhark Nonagesimus_ ,” she snarls. “If you must be vulgar, _Harrow_ may suffice.”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Coronabeth says. “Everyone calls me Corona. I used to call Ianthe Anthy. It’s just… a nickname.”

“I may be forced to tie my house to yours, Princess, but I am not of the Third. You will use my full name, or not at all.”

At that, Coronabeth does sneer.

“You’re awfully self-righteous for someone in your position, _Harry._ ” She steps forward; Harrow retreats. The leather bench presses against the back of Harrow’s calves. Coronabeth’s standing in front of the light; all Harrow sees, looking up, is a golden halo and a slash of red and white. She’s _sure_ the Princess has had her teeth done.

“Your House is placed under the tutelage of the Third, you’ve been lying to the Necrolord and the rest of the Empire for years, and you have barely three hundred people in your House at all. Without my House, yours will be extinct in a matter of years, and yet you _demand_?”

Coronabeth leans forward. Harrow has to bend back.

“In a few hours you’re going to swear fealty to the Third, in the receiving room, in front of your serfs and all the nobility of Ida. Are you going to be a brat there?”

“I will do what I must.”

“What you _must_ is swear fealty to my House, Nonagesimus.”

“I wasn’t aware you’d inherited the Third,” Harrow shoots back. “I thought it was your father’s house.”

At that, the sneer gleams like a knife’s edge.

“Father sits around talking politics, and licking his lips whenever our legions make a new conquest. He spends half his time shuttling around to grubby little worlds covered in bomb craters. On Ida, and on this ship, Ianthe and I _are_ the Third. And you _will_ swear fealty to us.”

Coronabeth is so close Harrow could kiss her.

She wonders where the thought came from. Then she wonders how to make it go away.

“I am the Necromancer of the Ninth, Princess,” she replies. “I will do as the Necrolord Highest commands; I won’t bow to _you_.”

“You think you’re the only Necromancer in the Empire, Reverend Daughter? The Third has secrets even your decrepit hole has never seen.”

“Maybe. But if I were interested in learning your sordid little tricks, Tridentarius, I’d go to your sister.”

“Ianthe would eat you up and spit you out, Nonagesimus.” Coronabeth’s voice is but a whisper.

“She certainly seems far more a necromancer than you, Princess.”

A flash of hot fury in Coronabeth’s violet eyes. The sneer drops, turns to gritted teeth and a clenched jaw. The Crown Princess’s gaze flickers – to Harrow’s eyes, to her throat, to her lips.

A moment of quiet, precipice understanding.

Harrow has sworn to herself she will not love any other than she who lies in the ice at the heart of Drearburh.

But then, she’s decided she hates Coronabeth Tridentarius.

They both lunge.

Harrow has never kissed anyone before; whenever she’d imagined it, the lips had always been cold. These ones aren’t; there as hot as rage and shame. Coronabeth’s leaning over her, long arms bracketing Harrow against the bench. She doesn’t appear to care that Harrow’s clumsy, and it only takes her a span of heartbeats to call the pace. Coronabeth’s tongue slips through Harrow’s lips, retreats; a bite to Harrow’s lip, hard enough to earn a hiss of pain. Their teeth clack together. Harrow feels short of breath, and can’t tell if it’s due to the kiss or the strange place she’s in, way past panic and into determination.

They break apart, and there’s hunger in Coronabeth’s gaze. Harrow can feel heat, down low in the base of her gut. The lights seem brighter; they turn that golden hair into a halo about Coronabeth’s head. The air seems at once muggy humid and icy cold.

Harrow’s breathing like she’s just run a hundred metres; her pulse is racing, and not from the elliptical.

“So that’s how you want it, Harry,” Coronabeth breathes. She’s right, and Harrow hates her for it. She wants – aches with want, as if the eighteen years she’s spent in the gloom of the Ninth have been but a prelude to this desire. This isn’t the girl in the Tomb; Coronabeth is here, and breathing, and so smug Harrow isn’t sure if she wants to kill her or kiss her again. She goes for the second kiss.

It’s long, and sloppy, and Harrow hisses into Coronabeth’s mouth as perfect teeth – she _has_ to have had them corrected – nip at her lip. Coronabeth’s hands skim down Harrow’s side, to the damp hem of the goddamned exercise shirt. Fingers – cold and hot at the same time, somehow – slip underneath, splaying out across Harrow’s stomach. Coronabeth pulls back, and Harrow, for half an instant, follows her like a magnet.

“How far do you want to go, Harrow?” Coronabeth asks. Harrow notes, through the fog of lust, that it’s the first time Coronabeth has used her name correctly. Harrow swallows. Panic twists in her chest.

Letting it happen is one thing. To ask for it would be entirely too horrible.

She’s frozen, between desire and pride and not a little shame. She hates the Third, she’s decided, because the universe – if there is any justice – ought to hate her. A creature as hateful as Harrowhark Nonagesimus should not be allowed to _want_ the way she does.

She swallows, and Coronabeth’s eyes flicker lazily to the movement of her throat and the hammer of her pulse. The princess lowers herself down, so golden hair brushes against Harrow’s face and her breath rasps hot against Harrow’s ear:

“It would be entirely wrong to do this with a vassal without her requesting it,” Coronabeth murmurs. “If you want this, Harrow, you need to ask for it,”

“Ask for what?” Harrow replies, because it’s the only thing she can think of that isn’t asking for it.

“For what you _want_ , Harrow.”

She wants to gouge Coronabeth Tridentarius’s eyes out. She wants Coronabeth Tridentarius to tear her clothes off and fuck her until she can’t think. She wants to see Coronabeth Tridentarius naked and defeated. She thinks she might be able to achieve one of those, but her mouth won’t shape the words.

“I can’t,” she breathes, and even that feels like defeat.

Coronabeth stills above her.

Then:

“Do you want me to take your shirt off?”

Harrow’s whispered “Yes” feels like she’s cut open a cyst.

“Do you want me to take the rest of your clothes off?”

Coronabeth’s fingers trail from being underneath Harrow’s shirt to being underneath Harrow’s waistband, gently rubbing against the skin above her underwear.

“Yes,” Harrow says, and feels the cosmos should cry out in revulsion.

“Do you want me to fuck you, Harrow? Right here, right now?”

Coronabeth almost doesn’t sound smug. Harrow is too worked up for that to matter any more.

“Yes,” she says, through the thorns in her throat.

Coronabeth leans back, just a little, and those violet eyes seem brighter than they should, even with the pupils blown wide. Her lips – red like arterial spray – curve into a smirk that should be nowhere near as attractive as it is. She looks like she’s about to say something, then stops.

Her fingers slide back up, chasing Harrow’s shirt up her torso. There’s a brief moment of darkness as Harrow pulls it over her head, and then Coronabeth is kissing her again. Her hands are tangled in the shirt, stretched back towards the weight bar –

 _Click_.

Harrow jerks back. She has no idea where in that absurd getup Coronabeth hid a pair of fucking handcuffs, but there they are, neatly clipped around her wrists, the links between them looped about the weight bar. Coronabeth throws the shirt away, then smiles sweetly into Harrow’s furious gaze.

“Does this make it easier, Harrow?”

The princess is straddling her, and the air is just slightly chilly on her skin.

“Why in the name of the Resurrection would this make it easier?”

“Because now,” Coronabeth says, languidly flicking the buttons on her pelisse open, “you can simply lie back and let me take care of you.”

Harrow’s lip curls, but the concept has some appeal. At least this way it won’t be any more obvious than it already was that Harrow has no deathly clue what she’s doing. And if she can make Tridentarius do all the work, that’s sort of like a victory.

“Go on, then,” she says, and Coronabeth grins. She leans back down, her mouth meeting Harrows, then breaking off, trailing hot over Harrow’s jaw and neck and shoulder. Harrow wonders for a moment how Coronabeth will get her bra off – it’s a firm athletic thing, designed to keep her chest in place, the kind of thing Griddle wears – but it turns out the answer is that Tridentarius simply plans to undo it and pull it away from Harrow’s breasts.

There’s not much there, Harrow knows, but Coronabeth doesn’t seem to care, and the Crown Princess’s mouth on her tits makes a shiver go up her legs. Coronabeth chuckles, gently rolling Harrow’s nipple between her teeth, before paying some attention to the other one. Harrow’s skin is damp where Coronabeth’s mouth has been, and the chill of evaporation makes her gasp. Blunt nails run up and down Harrow’s back, then curl around the waistband of Harrow’s shorts and underwear.

Coronabeth’s mouth is now at Harrow’s stomach, and for a moment the Princess rests her pointed chin just below Harrow’s belly-button. There’s a trail of downy hair that peeks up from under Harrow’s waistband; she’d never bothered to worry about it, but now she feels self-conscious. Coronabeth grins at her like a schoolgirl, then keeps eye contact as she flicks her tongue out to circle Harrow’s belly-button. Then, it one swift move that Harrow barely notices she’s been helped into, the shorts and underwear are gone, and Harrow’s naked before the Princess of the Third.

There’s a kiss on her thigh, then a trail up to her knee; Coronabeth doesn’t say anything, but Harrow is incredibly glad she covered the mirrors. Fingers trailing down her thigh, kisses up and over her pubic bone; Coronabeth dances around Harrow’s centre, until Harrow hisses with every touch.

“You’re teasing me,” she says.

“Yes, I am.”

The words are followed, almost instantly, by a tongue across Harrow’s labia, and she gasps.

“Would you like me to stop teasing?”

It’s almost embarrassing how quickly Harrow yelps the “Yes!”.

Harrow’s managed to keep her thoughts vaguely coherent up til now; that stops as Coronabeth leans in to her, open-mouthed. She has touched herself before, in the darkest hours of Drearburh’s night-cycle, under as many layers of coverlet and robe as she could muster; this is nothing like that.

She knows the anatomy Coronabeth is touching – she’s the best Necromancer of her generation, of course she knows – but bringing them to mind as Coronabeth’s tongue laves her, dips into her, is more than she can manage. Her thighs have gone taut, her legs draped over the princess’s shoulders. She looks down – the position is awkward with her hands bound above her head – and sees a mass of golden hair, then Coronabeth’s face as she comes up for air.

The princess is grinning like a skull, her face and chin slick. She’s slid off the bench, kneeling before Harrow. Harrow is about to take a moment to feel smug about that, but Coronabeth nips at the tender part of her thigh, just hard enough to bruise. Harrow yelps.

“Was that necessary?” Her voice flutters, but she’s too far gone to hate it.

The laugh Coronabeth gives her is all filth, and her tongue flickers out to roll over Harrow’s clitoris. Harrow jerks, just a little.

“Think of it as an education, Harrow,” Coronabeth says. One hand cups Harrow’s backside, the other – it is _incredibly_ unfair that someone can both have very long legs and very long arms – and touches Harrow’s breast. Her mouth returns to its work, and harrow has to make an effort to contain the noises she wants to make. It’s one thing to let the Crown Princess of Ida fuck her; it’s quite another to let Coronabeth know she’s _enjoying_ it.

Even as she thinks it, she suspects she may not be concealing it all that well.

She spends what seems a very long time lying there, with Coronabeth Tridentarius lapping at her, pleasure building like a well of thanergy. She’d have thought this would end fast – tomb knows she’s not had experience to build up stamina – but despite her apparent enthusiasm, Coronabeth is gentle, coaxing Harrow along, bringing her up to the edge.

Harrow’s heart hammers, her guts feel like they’re suspended in microgravity. She realises, distantly, that she’s making noise, and is thankful that she can barely hear it over the thunder of her pulse. She’s rising, rising and falling down, tipping closer and closer to the edge. She lets out a particularly guttural moan, her thighs tightening around Coronabeth’s head. Coronabeth’s tongue dips in to her, deep and curling, withdraws, trails up to her clitoris. Harrow’s eyes are clenched shut – a single touch, one swipe from that tongue will send her over –

Suddenly, Coronabeth’s mouth is gone; Harrow’s legs are swung back, and Coronabeth is slithering up Harrow’s body, her face dripping from Harrow’s cunt.

Harrow makes a noise that embarrasses her, her vision bright and blurry.

“What--”

Coronabeth is pressing her down, her open jacket and shirt letting hot skin slide against Harrow’s chest. She feels tight fabric against her thighs, a pair of fingers – middle, ring – brushing gently against Harrow’s nether lips.

“Don’t you remember, Harrow?” Coronabeth says, her other hand resting against Harrow’s collarbone. “You asked things of me, but I also asked something of you. Do you remember?”

Harrow’s response is something like “guh,” which is frankly pathetic.

“If you want to come, Harry,” Coronabeth says, sweetly, “You have to swear fealty.”

She pants, for a second, as her brain finally catches up with her lust.

“You bitch,” she manages.

“That’s ‘you bitch, your Royal Highness’, Reverend Daughter.”

“You did all this to make me swear?”

“I did all this because you seemed repressed and uptight, Harry. And because under all that horrible face paint you’re actually quite beautiful in a pointy sort of way. Because no-one’s shagged a bone nun in _years_ and I’m damned if anyone’s going to pip me to it. And because I thought you’d make _delightful_ noises.” Each item is accompanied by a tapped finger on Harrow’s collarbone. Coronabeth tosses her hair.

“And, yes, to make you swear fealty. I’m the Third. I’m its heir. Everything that is the Third’s is mine, Harry. Including your fealty.” There’s a thin skein of Harrow’s – juices? That seems a horribly vulgar term – stretching between Coronabeth’s lips. As Harrow’s eyes come to rest on it, Coronabeth licks it away.

Harrow swallows.

“And if I refuse?”

“Then,” Coronabeth says, one finger tracing Harrow’s jawline. “I’ll undo these handcuffs, and walk away. You’ll spend the rest of your time with us as the perfect little ward, tutored by my tutors, standing behind Father when he meets dignitaries. Seen and not heard.” Coronabeth leans forward again, whispering in Harrow’s ear.

“ _Or,_ you can swear to me. And we can be the very _dearest_ of friends, Harry. I can make you come now. I can make you come whenever you want. We can be as thick as thieves, you and I. All you have to do is swear the oath. Do you want me to make you come?”

She does. More than almost anything, right now. What, really, will she lose? Pride? Her pride has already been stripped. Dignity? She had little to start with, really, and worrying about dignity while naked and handcuffed to a gym machine seems pointless.

She doesn’t want to let Coronabeth Tridentarius win.

But then – given what she knows – what she plans – giving the Third an easy victory now might be for the best.

She can always reverse this little game later.

“Yes,” she says, almost without hearing herself.

“Good _girl_ ,” Coronabeth says in her ear, and Harrow has nowhere near enough composure left to process the stab of heat that sends down her spine. “One last thing, Harry.”

“What?”

“I find a little pressure on the throat can help intensify things. Would you like to try that, Harry?”

“If you’re choking me, how am I supposed to swear?”

“ _Harry_ ,” Coronabeth says. “Credit me with some experience.”

Coronabeth’s hand is just below Harrow’s throat. Harrow wants, so much that all her being seems to have disappeared behind the desire. She remembers a fantasy, once – the first time she’d touched herself – of icy fingers wrapping around her throat.

This isn’t that, but it still makes her shiver.

“Yes.”

Coronabeth sits back on her haunches. One foot must be bracing on the ground, because when she presses the web of her hand to Harrow’s windpipe, the pressure is controlled and gentle. She can still breathe, but the increase in effort sets off fireworks behind her eyes. The pelisse and shirt are open, and Coronabeth’s tits are, freed from their coverings, absolutely magnificent, even to Harrow’s inexperienced eyes. She finds she wants to put her mouth on them.

“Repeat after me,” Coronabeth says, her eyes boring into Harrow’s. “I, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of Drearburh, Heir to the Ninth House –”

“I, Harrowhark Nonagesimus...” the repetition has something of a catechism about it as Harrow completes the phrase.

“Do swear, in the Myriadic Year of Our Lord,” Coronabeth continues, “in the name of Our Necrolord the Highest, who is our God and our Emperor,”

When Harrow reaches “God and our Emperor”, Coronabeth runs her fingers up Harrow, drawing a gasp. Her thumb brushes Harrow’s clitoris.

“To offer the House of the Third my leal service and vassalage,”

“To offer the House of the Third my leal service and vassalage – ah!”

Two fingers slip into Harrow and slowly swipe upwards. The pressure at Harrow’s throat tightens, just a little. She twitches in Coronabeth’s grasp.

“To serve the Third as I serve my Necrolord, to offer it fealty and obeisance,” Coronabeth says, schoolteacher-slow. On “fealty and obesiance”, she curls her fingers in Harrow, drawing a strained whine.

“I will remain faithful to the House of the Third for the length of my vassalage,”

Harrow choruses, and the fingers withdraw, only to thrust in again. It’s slow, deliberate, sweet torture.

“I will honour its dead and fight its battles as its own. I will honour its heirs as my own flesh and end,”

Harrow’s sucking in air; her world has narrowed to the hand at her groin and the hand at her throat, and the violet annihilation of Coronabeth’s eyes.

“I will be student, satrap, and servant to the House of the Third, until my Lord releases me from my oath.”

“… until my Lord releases me from my oath,” Harrow says, and moans as Coronabeth’s right hand disappears from her cunt. The pressure at her throat lessens momentarily, and she sees Coronabeth’s fingers in her mouth, sucking Harrow off them. Then Coronabeth leans in, her eyes burning, her breasts brushing Harrow’s chest.

“With my soul I so swear,” Coronabeth says.

“With my soul I – hng – I so swear,” Harrow echoes, and the fingers slip back inside, curling mercilessly against her.

“With my mind I so swear,”

“With – with my mind I so – ah – swear,”

The heel of Coronabeth’s palm meets Harrow’s clitoris. Harrow’s breath comes in shallow gasps. She’s close, she’s so close, there’s nothing else, no God, no Tomb, no Drearburh, only the hands on her and the Princess of Ida above her and the lightning in her veins.

“With my body I so swear,” Coronabeth says.

“With… with my body I so–” She tries to form the words, but only animal noises come out

“With my _body_ I so _swear_ ,” Coronabeth repeats. Her hand stills, like a viper readying the deathblow.

“With my body – I so – with my body –”

A thumb brushes against Harrow’s lips, across her teeth.

“Be a good girl, Harry,” Coronabeth croons. “Say the words.”

“With my body I so swear!” The words come out in a rush, bitten out before Harrow can ruin it with moans.

“Thank you, Harry,” Coronabeth breathes, and curls her fingers against Harrow, inside.

The world goes white; Harrow shakes, caught – how long, she can’t judge. She bucks against the bench, against the Princess. Breath returns in a cold rush, and there’s wet heat at her groin, Coronabeth’s tongue and fingers working in concert. She can’t process the noises she’s making over the fireworks in her brain; perhaps that’s for the best.

The reverie fades, slowly; she’s dimly aware of the handcuffs popping off, of sliding off the bench.

When she comes back to herself, she’s cradled in Coronabeth’s arms, leaned up on the floor against the exercise bench. Her arms ache, sore and warm; her legs feel like another necromancer has taken femur, tibia, and fibula. Coronabeth’s britches are undone; Harrow watches as she rocks against her own hand.

Harrow’s not quite too drained to feel smug as the Crown Princess of Ida groans and whimpers to alleviate the tension Harrow’s built up in her.

When Coronabeth has come – it’s surprisingly quiet, considering how larger-than-life she is in other respects – she meets Harrow’s gaze. There’s smugness there, and anger, and, even still, lust. Coronabeth’s throat works.

“Satisfied, Princess?” Harrow asks, voice hoarse.

Coronabeth doesn’t answer. She simply leans in and kisses Harrow. The earlier assertion is gone; this, at least, is gentle. Harrow can taste herself on Coronabeth’s tongue. They break apart, and Harrow rests her head on Coronabeth’s shoulder for a moment. The embrace is not at all cold. In her dreams, this had always been cold. She finds tears pricking at her eyes. Are they relief, or release, or rage? Shame at betrayal? She screws up her eyes and wills them away.

Coronabeth manoeuvres her back on to the bench, and grabs a pair of towels from the rack. They clean themselves, as much as they can, wordlessly. Coronabeth sucks herself back into her shirt and pelisse; Harrow retrieves her damned exercise wear on shaky legs. She has a heavy black robe hung up near the door, and that, at least, makes her feel secure.

“You’ll want to shower before the ceremony,” Coronabeth says, pausing as she leaves. Other than the state of her hair, there’s nothing in her appearance that would show she’s just had sex. Harrow wonders, idly, what the britches are made of that they’re that tight and still show no stain. Maybe Coronabeth is using Thanergy to wick away the fluid.

“I know,” Harrow says. After this, swearing to the King of Ida will be rather less galling, if only because she’s already shucked her dignity.

“So that’ll be two out of three oaths,” Coronabeth continues.

“What?”

“Harry,” Coronabeth says, smirking once again. “I thought you’d realise.”

“Realise what?”

“Ianthe will want you to swear to her as well.”

With that, the Crown Princess of Ida turns and leaves, Harrow gaping like a trepanation behind her.


End file.
